|
Apart from six months in Pakistan I have
always been inside Afghanistan. During the communist regime I unfortunately
spent most of the time in prison. I still believe that my personal heaven is
Afghanistan, and I wish to live in my heaven and die in my heaven, hopefully
not now but later.
I am deeply impressed and touched by the
presentations that have been given at this conference. This is the first
time ever that I have heard speeches that so deeply go into the problems of
Afghanistan. I would however like to take this opportunity to ask the
Swedish and Norwegian authorities, and also bring to the attention of his
Excellency the Ambassador Jawed Ludin, to rethink the policies of the
Swedish and Norwegian Governments about the asylum seekers here.
I totally agree with the excellent,
however pessimistic, analytical picture of Mr. Barnett Rubin, saying that if
you want to have the problem solved you have to do a proper and deep
analysis. I would like to add to it some good and optimistic information.
Three weeks ago there was an interview with the Minister of Mines and
Industry in Kabul. He revealed and unbelievable piece of information. The
Minister said that 30% of the mines in Afghanistan have been surveyed from
space. This amount is that huge that if you excavate 50% of the mines you
will get revenue of between USD 200 and 300 billion. This amount of money is
even 30 times more than the amount that we have now pledged for Afghanistan,
and this far we have only been able to spend 28% of this amount. This is
perhaps an area where we can see that Afghanistan is a resource, and we are
looking very much forward to this in the country.
As has been mentioned before, it is not
fair to ignore what has been achieved so far in Afghanistan. I believe that
the interim Government, the constitution and the elections, both the
presidential and the parliament, were successes. The Berlin conference and
the London conference were successes for the people of Afghanistan. Progress
can be seen in different areas of the society and programs for the future
development are initiated. On the internet and from other sources can be
seen more in detail how many roads there are, how is the access to water,
how many clinics, schools and students there are and how the development is
proceeding in the areas of trade, agriculture, communication, modern science
and global linkage. There are national programs for Afghanistan like the
National Solidarity Programs (NSP) and the Afghanistan National Development
Strategy (ANDS). I would like to mention and emphasize that the challenges
that Afghanistan is facing are so huge that they can always undermine the
achievements. We are dealing with huge poverty, insecurity and many other
problems.
Let me go back to the expectation of the
people of Afghanistan. I am coming from the grassroots level, and my
organization is a real grassroots organization that is working in all
provinces of Afghanistan. We are even present in the most insecure areas of
Uruzgan and Zabul in the South. We just won a contract with a contractor of
USAID to implement local government capacity building programs in these
particular provinces, where insecurity is erupting.
The expectations of people at the
grassroots level were in the beginning very high. We thought that the
Americans and the westerners were coming together with democracy and that
there would be many funds for Afghanistan. We were expecting to see
prosperity, security, employment and justice coming to Afghanistan. We also
expected poverty to be eradicated, and that the social services and social
justice would be available for everybody. Unfortunately the expectations
were too high, and the national, international and regional commitment was
very much too low. This is where the failure starts. There was a very solid
attention towards Afghanistan, not only from the part of Sweden, but from
everybody. But behind this attention there is no solid commitment for
implementation.
There are 29 countries working with
security in Afghanistan. I think that 75% of the budget allocated for
Afghanistan is now spent on security. But what is the outcome of the
security efforts? There is now more insecurity in the country than before.
Afghanistan is now more hostile to
Pakistan and Iran than it was before and there also is more ethnic hostility
inside the country than before.
One has to put focus on the reasons for
the failure. What went wrong? In this I am talking on behalf of people who
are illiterate. Firstly I think there was no comprehensive regional plan in
the strategy to tackle the problems. America had their own agenda and their
own interest, the Europeans had theirs and Pakistan, Iran India had theirs,
which were very similar.
There has not been any coordination
among the actors in Afghanistan. The Government of Afghanistan always claims
that it is not aware of the plans of the different actors in the country.
For example, they claim to be unaware of what is happening in the country
when the coalition forces and ISAF are bombing or when Pakistan is entering
into Afghanistan. Coordination has not existed at all, and Afghanistan has
suffered very badly from this. Different actors have different development
plans for Afghanistan. Sweden has its own agenda, and is working in the way
that we like. Accordingly Germans, Norwegians, Americans, Brits and
Bulgarians have their own agendas. There has always been a question of who
is doing what in Afghanistan and the government has not been fully aware of
the answer to that question.
PRT is a new phenomenon in the country.
We do not know what the PRTs are doing. The perceptions are that the PRTs
are trying to build up a parallel government to the Government of
Afghanistan. There are more resources with the PRTs than with the Government
of Afghanistan. I would like to mention that the budget of one of the PRTs,
consisting of 1,200 people, is EUR 550 million per year. This can be
compared with the total development budget of the country, which amounts of
USD 1,132 million per year.
Huge amounts of money are coming into
the country, but are not being spent on the right things, and not in
coordination and close cooperation with the Government of Afghanistan, the
civil society and with the other groups in the country which are deeply
involved in development processes of the country. What is needed is a
dynamic economy plan for the country, to be recognized by all parties. Not
only by the Government of Afghanistan, but by all groups of the society and
all the international actors in Afghanistan.
We want to address comprehensively the
issue of social development and the political justice in the country. We are
very worried about the future of justice. We all believe in democracy, but
we do not want democracy in Afghanistan. Both Afghans and international
actors in Afghanistan want democracy in their neighboring countries, but not
inside their respective country.
Focus must be on coordinated approaches
for solving the problems, in consultation with the people of Afghanistan,
and with the Government of Afghanistan. National programs, such as NSP, need
to be implemented throughout the country to provide job opportunities to the
people of Afghanistan, and eradicate poverty. Poverty is erupting
everywhere. I assume in the North poverty is now ten times what it was six
years ago. The North is not secure anymore. It seems like it is calm, but it
is not. It is just the calm before the storm. Poverty could be the main
reason for any insecurity increase in the North.
Afghan ownership and partnership must be
stressed. I am very straightforward on this issue. We do no feel the afghan
ownership throughout the whole process and we do not see real partnership in
these processes. For Iran it takes two weeks to dismiss two of the
ministers. For Pakistan it takes one week to do whatever they want to do in
Afghanistan. For Russia it takes a week’s time to disorder one of the cities
in the country. I am not going to talk about what the UK and the United
States are doing, but I would like to mention that I have heard, from the
Senior Advisors of the President, that if President Karzai wants to remove
someone from the police headquarters it will take him 15 days to do that.
This is not a good sign of Afghan ownership. The president has to consult
everybody whether he is able to remove a person or not.
We need an administrational reform and
we need a commitment for that. Whenever we want to remove a human rights
violator, we face resistance. Not only from the Government of Afghanistan
but sometimes also from the International Community. It can be noticed that
only ten out of 34 governors in the country have not been involved in the
past war activities. We also need proper counter-corruption programs in
Afghanistan, supported by the International Community.
We are fed up with the dual policies. We
do not see frankness and straightforwardness in the policies. Pakistan has a
dual policy in Afghanistan. We always attack poor Pakistan, but there are
many other countries which also have dual policies in Afghanistan. This
makes it difficult for the Government of Afghanistan to really tackle the
problems, and consequently makes like difficult for the people of
Afghanistan.
When it comes to drug and poppy
eradication, we are extremely worried. At this stage the drug economy is the
only sustainable economy in the country. The total government revenue for
this year is around USD 350 million. The ordinary budget of the country is
USD 700 million. Afghanistan is thus not able to finance its budget form its
revenues. The only sustainable economy at this stage in the country is the
drug economy. Who will govern Afghanistan in five years from now if the
International Community will get ort from Afghanistan or pull out their
assistance and generous support to Afghanistan? If the International
Community leaves Afghanistan it will presumably fall into the hands of the
drug owners and mafia since we do not have the economy to take the power
from the drug dealers and the drug mafia. |
